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DOI: https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1703475B
Original scientific article
Received: 10.8.2017. — Accepted: 25.8.2017.
Arthur Bueno
1 A previous version of this paper was presented at the workshop Anerkennung und
Freiheit – eine Verhältnisbestimmung (University of Zurich, January 2016). I would like
thank all participants and especially Axel Honneth for their comments. I am also grateful
for the valuable suggestions made by Hartmut Rosa and other members of the Max-We-
ber-Kolleg, by the participants of the workshop Social Pathologies and Mutual Recognition
(University of Jyväskylä, May 2016), as well as by Mariana Teixeira and Dagmar Wilhelm.
This work was generously supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.
to this “nearly impossible concept” (Honneth 2014) was ascribed a wide vari-
ety of meanings, among which it may seem difficult to find a common core.2
In the following, some initial steps will be taken towards a conception of
social pathology capable of combining conceptual breadth and consistency.
Taking into account the diverse uses of this concept throughout Honneth’s
oeuvre, I will mainly focus on three of its formulations. First, the more re-
cent discussions on the topic – especially those presented in “The Diseases
of Society” – will be examined with a view to highlighting its central features
as well as its potentially problematic aspects. To that end, four dimensions
of the concept will be considered: (a) phenomenological, (b) methodologi-
cal, (c) social-ontological, and (d) etiological. Second, an implicit conception
of social pathology that can be found in Struggle for Recognition will be re-
viewed and contrasted to Honneth’s more recent arguments on the subject.
By disclosing the actual or potential discrepancies between both conceptions,
476 the aim is to outline the grounds on which they could be brought together
within the framework of a comprehensive concept of social pathology. With
this in mind, finally, I will analyse the transformations of the conception of
“pathologies of freedom” which was first presented in Suffering from Inde-
terminacy and later developed, with some restrictions, in Freedom’s Right, as
well as suggest ways of avoiding its pitfalls.
2 For a review of the uses of this category in Honneth’s work, see Freyenhagen 2015.
In contrast with the latter approach, my purpose is not to discuss in detail all the differ-
ent meanings of the notion of social pathology in Honneth’s writings, but rather to
critically reconstruct them in order to outline a more comprehensive and cohesive
concept. For another overview of Honneth’s conceptions of social pathology, cf. Laitin-
en, Särkelä and Ikäheimo 2015.
AXEL HONNETH’S RECENT WORKS
3 It is also worth noting that in Freedom’s Right Honneth still talks about “symptoms”,
whereas in more recent writings the term is avoided. Cf. Honneth 2014 [2011]: 86-87.
Arthur Bueno The Psychic Life of Freedom
Yet, it is not clear how one should identify abnormalities in ordinary be-
haviour if not based on the lived experience of the subjects in question.
Moreover, given that such problematic modes of behaviour constitute visi-
ble expressions of impairments to individual freedom, it seems one should
assume that the latter are somehow subjectively felt. If this is so, then a di-
agnosis of social pathology must be able to identify or at least presume, by
taking up the participant’s perspective, subjective indicators or symptomatic
expressions of such impairments – which could, in a further step, be referred
to disturbances in social reproduction.
These arguments do not stem only from Honneth’s stance with regard to phe-
nomenological and methodological issues, but also from his particular stand-
point in relation to social-ontological matters (c). In “The Diseases of Society”,
it is argued that social pathologies consist in functional disturbances which
take place “on a level set principally above that of the subjects” (Honneth 2014:
700). Although they are expressed in certain moods or behavioral abnormali- 479
ties, these should not be confused with psychological functional disorders or
with the (perceived) suffering of individuals, insofar as it is “the ‘society’ itself
[which is] encroached upon by a particular disorganization of its social insti-
tutions in their functional efficiency” (Honneth 2014: 684). Diseases of soci-
ety should not be confused with the total amount of psychic illnesses affecting
some sufficient number of singular persons, nor with the collective understood
as a macro-subject with its own particular clinical syndrome. In rejecting the
latter options, Honneth argues for “the strong thesis that diseases of society
are separate phenomena, to be found solely at the level of society itself, not at
the level of its individual members” (Honneth 2014: 688; emphasis added).
The claim that social pathologies are located only at the level of society and
not of its individual members raises, however, some difficult questions from
a social-theoretical perspective. Certainly, Honneth does not intend to es-
tablish a complete separation between these two levels; after all, diseases
of society are seen to be expressed in behavioural abnormalities or diffuse
moods experienced by its individual members. At times, his purpose seems
to be merely the categorical clarification that functional disorders situated
at one level are not always equally expressed as functional disorders at the
other level. However, as this categorical argument is translated into the claim
that an “ontological difference” (Honneth 2014: 688) holds between society
and its members, the risk arises of incurring in a fallacy of misplaced con-
creteness (Whitehead 2011 [1925]) in the sense that two types of processes
(social reproduction and psychological experience) come to be conceived as
two different entities (society and the individual).
Given the Durkheimian accent of these formulations, we might turn to
the writings of the French sociologist in order to highlight the potential
Arthur Bueno The Psychic Life of Freedom
4 In “The Diseases of Society”, this interplay is conceived as one between the function-
al cycles of socialization, processing of nature, and regulation of relations of recognition.
In The Idea of Socialism (2015b), however, the same argument is applied to the entanglement
of the ‘ethical’ (sittlich) spheres of personal relationships, the market, and democratic
will-formation.
AXEL HONNETH’S RECENT WORKS
beings, just as infection with a disease endangers their physical life. If this
analogy seems plausible, as Honneth claims, it is first and foremost because
“the comparison with physical illness prompts the idea of identifying, for the
case of suffering social disrespect as well, a stratum of symptoms that, to a
certain extent, make the subjects aware of the state they are in” – such as the
sort of negative emotional reactions expressed in feelings of being ashamed
or enraged, hurt or indignant (Honneth 1995 [1992]: 135). Hence, as physi-
cal illnesses constitute symptoms that make the subjects aware of threats to
the reproduction of their physical body, certain negative emotional reactions
could be seen as symptoms that signal threats to their psychological integrity.
Yet, such analogy does not hold only between organic and psychological
states. For just as threats to the physical integrity of an organism emerge in
the context of its relations with the environment, threats to its psychologi-
cal integrity generally arise in relationships with the social surroundings. So,
482 becoming aware of the state one is in might involve not only acknowledging
one’s psychological status, but also the social forms of disrespect to which
one is subject. Unlike organic diseases, however, such socially produced and
psychologically experienced disorders take place on the basis of the norma-
tive self-understanding of a historical epoch. They always emerge within a
certain ‘grammar’ on which subjects rely to formulate their discontent and
expectations regarding social relations in which they are involved. In mod-
ern societies, the language in which those forms of disrespect are articulat-
ed is, according to Honneth, founded on the idea of mutual recognition. By
connecting threats to the psychological integrity of humans to social forms
of disrespect, the framework presented in Struggle for Recognition thus es-
tablishes a fundamental connection between personal identity and social
patterns of recognition.
The reason for this can again be seen in the constitutional dependence of
humans on the experience of recognition. In order to acquire a success-
ful relation-to-self, one is dependent on the intersubjective recognition
of one’s abilities and accomplishments. Were one never to experience this
type of social approval at some stage of one’s development, this would
open up a psychological gap within one’s personality, into which negative
emotional reactions such as shame or rage could step. Hence, the experi-
ence of disrespect is always accompanied by affective sensations that are,
in principle, capable of revealing to individuals the fact that certain forms
of recognition are being withheld from them (Honneth 1995 [1992]: 135).
Those negative emotions are more than just an initial indicator of what might
be involved in relations of disrespect; as symptoms, they already represent the
first reaction of the organism to what threatens its psychological integrity. It
is for this reason that they can be regarded as the motivational basis of mor-
al struggles for recognition. However, as in the case of organic threats, that
AXEL HONNETH’S RECENT WORKS
chain of reactions does not necessarily occur: a physical discomfort does not
necessarily constitute a disease; a disease is not always perceived or diagnosed
as such; and even diagnosed, one may not proceed to its treatment. Similarly,
a negative emotion does not necessarily constitute a sign of a form of disre-
spect; experiences of disrespect are not always perceived as such; and they
may not give rise to forms of social struggle for the establishment of relations
of mutual recognition. But to the extent that this chain of reactions does takes
place, social struggles for recognition can come to have a ‘therapeutic’ aspect,
in that they constitute reactions against disturbed forms of social relation-
ship and self-relation motivated by the establishment of “social guarantees
associated with those relations of recognition that are able to protect sub-
jects most extensively from suffering disrespect” (Honneth 1995 [1992]: 135).
Now one can observe that what is at stake in these arguments is more than
an analogy. Disorders of organic and psychosocial type are not only simi-
lar in many respects; they are also in continuity with each other. Thus, if the 483
metaphor presented in Struggle for Recognition makes sense, it is because it
refers to the fact that disturbances in relations of mutual recognition effec-
tively constitute a threat to the individual life of human beings and, corre-
spondingly, to social life as a whole. The analogy between the biological and
the socialized body might then reveal not only what is similar among them,
but also that their similarity is dependent on their character as moments of
the same vital process. Hence, one should speak in this context rather of ho-
mology than of analogy: while the latter comprises the establishment of su-
perficial similarities between two entities or processes, a homology entails
a common causal mechanism that underlies their resemblance and thus the
assumption of a real continuity between them (cf. Elster 2009: 7-8). Desig-
nating certain phenomena as social pathologies therefore amounts to consid-
ering that, as in the case of physical diseases, one is dealing with occurrences
by means of which human life – both in its individual and social dimensions
– is threatened in its integrity.
This homological perspective significantly modifies the way in which the re-
lationship between different analytical dimensions comes to be conceived in
the diagnosis of social pathologies, in particular with regard to their symp-
tomatic expressions. As reactions to threats to psychic life, negative emo-
tions that arise in the context of experiences of disrespect are taken here as
symptoms of social-pathological phenomena, but only at a first level of anal-
ysis. Beyond those emotional experiences, social pathologies would equal-
ly manifest themselves in disturbances which appear at the second level of
the reproduction of intersubjective life and often lead to, as well as are op-
posed by, struggles for recognition. Finally, such a framework can be ex-
tended to the institutional realm of society, though in 1992 Honneth had not
yet fully developed arguments in that direction: symptomatic indications of
Arthur Bueno The Psychic Life of Freedom
6 It was in this period that social pathologies came to be conceived as “second-order
disorders” (Zurn 2011). Though I will not be able to further discuss this point here, I
agree with Freyenhagen (2015) and Laitinen (2015) on the fact that the designation of
social pathologies as ‘second-order’ phenomena can be misleading if we understand by
that only disorders in the reflective access to primary systems of actions and norms. In
what follows, I will reconstruct Honneth’s conception of “pathologies of freedom” in a
way that encompasses, but is not restricted to, dysfunctional relationships between re-
flective and unreflective value-commitments.
Arthur Bueno The Psychic Life of Freedom
“vacuity” and “burden”, which Hegel analysed in his Philosophy of Right, but
also in the “most widespread forms of the subject’s psychic failure” in cur-
rent society, such as the increasing incidence of depression (Honneth 2000).7
This model for conceptualizing social pathologies was preserved in Free-
dom’s Right, but with significant restrictions. Not only psychic illnesses lost
the leading position they had in the previous formulation of the ‘pathologies
of freedom’, but also these came to be seen as particular to the social spheres
of modern law and autonomous morality. In this view, it would be specific to
such institutional spheres – which share the characteristic of providing only
“possibilities” of freedom – an internal tendency to continuously generate il-
lusions of the complete realization of individual freedom. This would occur
in such spheres by way of a practical misinterpretation of their underlying
normative regulations, generated by the same norms to which this misin-
terpretation is committed. Thus, would be constitutive to them a structural
486 tendency to bring members of society to mistakenly consider mere possi-
bilities of freedom to be the whole of freedom. For their turn, the ‘ethical’
(sittlich) spheres of personal relationships, market relations, and democratic
will-formation – precisely because they provide “realities” of freedom and
thus already hold in principle the institutional conditions for its complete
realization – would not have the internal tendency to generate systematic
illusions. Since in these spheres “the participants [...] could not entertain the
idea that they could realize their freedom through purely individual action”,
structural deformations such as those prevailing in the cases of law and mo-
rality would not take place, but only misdevelopments (Fehlentwicklungen)
arising from the influence of external factors, by means of which “the lev-
el of the realization of the underlying promise of freedom, which has been
achieved through successful outcomes of social struggles, could either be
entirely undone, or seriously put at risk” (Honneth 2015a: 215).
Honneth has recently reconsidered this distinction between social pathol-
ogies and misdevelopments. He now acknowledges the possibility that “the
spheres of social freedom might [...] be vulnerable to systematic misinter-
pretation, as they cannot eliminate the possibility of having their principles
understood merely in terms of negative freedom” (Honneth 2015a: 215). This
signals, so to speak, a return to the broader model of pathologies of freedom
presented in the early 2000s. One must then ask how such systematic misin-
terpretations would be possible in the ‘ethical’ (sittlich) spheres, since in these
cases we cannot hold – as in the spheres of modern law and autonomous
morality – that there is a misunderstanding of the incomplete character of
the forms of freedom constitutive of those spheres. At this point we arrive
at one of the probable reasons for Honneth’s difficulty in conceiving the
occurrence of internal social pathologies in the ‘ethical’ spheres. Indeed, it
was only possible to assume in Freedom’s Right that the participants in these
spheres “could not entertain the idea that they could realize their freedom
through purely individual action” (Honneth 2015a: 215) because their nor-
mative structure was conceived in an excessively homogeneous manner. Ad-
vancing a theory of justice that aims to proceed immanently with regard to
social practices by finding its own principles in social reality, Honneth set
himself the difficult task of defining, in the context of complex and hetero-
geneous societies, general normative principles that could serve as the basis
for a critical reconstruction of their accomplishments and normative poten- 487
tials. To do so, however, it was necessary to assume that to each institutional
sphere corresponds a “dominant value” (Honneth 2014 [2011]: 6). Only then
the “stylized” (typisierend) consideration of progresses and regresses in his-
torical development would be able to take its course. However, this “socio-
logically stylized approach” with respect to the “conflictual and non-linear
realization of these principles” (Honneth 2014 [2011]: 8) ended up losing
sight, from a systematic point of view, of the constitutive role that normative
conflicts between modalities of freedom might have within ‘ethical’ spheres.
Without this, deviations in the realization of social freedom could only be
conceived as misdevelopments caused by factors which are external to these
spheres’ normative regulations.
Especially in the case of the market, an examination – even if ‘stylized’ – of
the normative conflicts which are institutionally inherent to it seems nec-
essary for the conceptualization of the particular systematic misinterpreta-
tions that take place there. In order to do so, one must bear in mind that the
normative structure of social spheres does not only comprise their partici-
pants’ self-understandings, but also the way in which social roles are struc-
tured within them, often regardless of the subjects’ explicit beliefs. This is
particularly true for the economic sphere. Considering that social institu-
tions are the medium which enables certain forms of social relation to take
place, if we aim at understanding the normative regulations of the market
sphere we must look at its primary medium, namely money.8 One might
8 This amounts to adopting a different strategy than the one taken up by Honneth in
Freedom’s Right, which rather relies on theoretical explanations of the market and on the
subjects’ explicit understandings about it. Cf. Honneth 2014 [2011]: 176-252.
Arthur Bueno The Psychic Life of Freedom
Concluding Remarks
The question of a general definition of social pathology can now be briefly
addressed. Unlike the other two models presented in “The Diseases of Soci-
ety” and Struggle for Recognition, the conception of ‘pathologies of freedom’
does not find its justification in an analogical or homological allusion to
organic processes. One might question, thus, if the term ‘pathology’ should
apply to it at all. However, the above considerations regarding the intercon-
nectedness of human life in all its levels should allow us to at least envision
the possibility of interpreting this conception in the broader lines of the
model at the basis of Struggle for Recognition. After all, as Honneth stated, “in
contrast to pre-human collectives, determining what makes a human soci-
ety capable of survival always involves regarding the normative beliefs of its
members” (Honneth 2014: 697). Human social life develops historically by
means of transformations in the normative self-understanding of its mem-
bers, as well as through the experimental attempts to realize the values and
ideals thus established. This process does not occur without disturbances,
which can be regarded as social pathologies insofar as they constitute im-
pediments to the realization of what a form of life, at a given moment in its
history, considers appropriate to itself.
On the basis of the reinterpretation of Honneth’s work carried out in this
paper, such assumption can now appear as congenial to both the framework
of ‘pathologies of recognition’ (presented in Struggle for Recognition) and the
model of ‘pathologies of freedom’ (developed in Suffering from Indetermina-
cy and Freedom’s Right). Each of these perspectives can be seen to emphasize
Arthur Bueno The Psychic Life of Freedom
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AXEL HONNETH’S RECENT WORKS
Artur Bueno
Psihički život slobode: socijalna patologija i njeni simptomi
Apstrakt
U ovom radu se razmatra odnos između intersubjektivne teorije priznanja Aksela
Honeta i njegove političke teorije demokratskog etičkog života, pre svega tako
što se analiziraju potencijali i teškoće vezane za koncepciju socijalne patologije.
Uzimajući u obzir različita značenja koncepcije u Honetovom delu, rad se na po-
četku fokusira na dve formulacije: prvo, na skorašnju raspravu u „Bolestima dru
štva“, koja se delimično može tumačiti i kao nastavak argumentacije iz Prava slo-
bode; i drugo, na implicitnu koncepciju socijalne patologije koja se može pronaći
u Borbi za priznanje. Ove dve formulacije se u potpunosti razlikuju u pogledu
svojih fenomenoloških, metodoloških, socijalno-ontoloških I etioloških premisa.
Smatram da te razlike mogu bolje da se razumeju ako imamo u vidu dva različita
shvatanja fundamentalne intuicije koja leži u osnovi pojma socijalne patologije:
razumevanje u formi analogije odnosno homologije. Kroz eksplikaciju nekih od
realnih ili potencijalnih diskrepancija između ove dve koncepcije, cilj rada je da
se ponudi jedna preliminarna osnova za povezivanje ove dve varijante u okviru
jedne sveobuhvatne koncepcije pojma socijalne patologije. U svetlu svega na-
vedenog, rad na kraju kritički razmatra treću koncepciju koja je predstavljena u
Patnji neodređenosti i kasnije razvijena, uz određena ograničenja, u Pravu slobode.
Konačno, predložena je jedna definicija socijalne patologije koja može da spoji
različite doprinose svake koncepcije, ujedno izbegavajući njihove zamke.